


First War

by mrhiddles



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, First Kiss, First Meetings, Gangs, M/M, Meet-Cute, POV Kaidan Alenko, Pre-Alliance, Teenagers, liberties taken with canon oh well, think teens in a small time crime ring and or gang on earth before they join the alliance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 08:02:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15190403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrhiddles/pseuds/mrhiddles
Summary: He’s told to push the new recruits harder. He’s told it doesn’t matter if they break. Only that if they do, to clean it up.Kaidan knows he has to leave.





	First War

**Author's Note:**

> Mass Effect is my favorite series, and recently I just pushed through to finish Andromeda after owning it since it came out. I miss the original story, but Andromeda was good too.
> 
> I've always loved the "what if Shepard and Kaidan were in a gang when they were teens" AU.

In his mind, they’ve fought two wars together. And the Reapers weren’t the worst. Not even close.

The first, was the very first time he laid eyes on him. The first time he saw him spit blood on the ground and grin. That was the worst.

The first time he saw John, he was sixteen and had a headache.

John was beating the shit out of some guy twice his age that could have looked at him wrong for all he knew. Right then, John had still just been new blood with flashing white teeth set in a snarl as he slammed his offender to the cement beneath his feet. And he followed him down, hitting and hitting and hitting him.

His head soars and he winces as he sees a beam of blue light send the new kid flying.

“That’s enough,” his boss calls from across the room. Boss had a way of seeming tired and final all at once, like a father.

Only Boss had about thirty kids and they all knew how to break fingers when they needed to. Anything to get some credits, or some food. Or connections. Boss usually wanted information these days.

“We’re gonna go big, soon. Just you wait and see, kid,” he’d tell him, some future glory shining in his eyes.

But he knows in his bones Boss is wrong. They’ll be stuck here, in this cement compound until they die in a fight or starve. Whichever comes first.

The new kid is up on his feet again and wiping his mouth. He does it again, staring at the blood on the back of his hand for a moment before frowning and walking away.

But _away_ happened to be _over_ to him. The new kid, bloodied white toothed grin kid, is making a beeline his way and he holds his breath. Hopes he isn’t about to be on the receiving end of those fists. Knows if he is, he’ll be able to blink and send the kid flying again, farther, _harder_.

He blinks, and the new kid is standing in front of him while the others mill around. Gwen, their tech mechanic is tinkering just out of sight and when the _sputter-spark_ of embers goes off, the new kid jerks his chin.

“John Shepard.”

“Kaidan Alenko,” he replies after a moment. John then. John is staring down at him and swings a hand out to slap him on the arm before he sits right next to him.

Kaidan watches John swivel his knee up to his chest as he digs in his jeans pocket for something. He pulls out a cigarette, an ancient and disgusting thing that looks terrible dangling out of John’s lips. Watches him light it and suck long and deep.

He swallows and looks away.

There’s blood on John’s cigarette as he pulls it away.

\--

The first time, it’s John kissing Gwen and Kaidan feels something small in him twist. He rubs at his stomach and wonders if he should eat something.

He’s seventeen today and he sees Gwen push John away. He’s too far away to hear what they’re saying. He feels a headache coming on and decides to leave after he sees John frown angrily.

He doesn’t know what it was. Doesn’t want to know why.

He doesn’t. He doesn’t.

Kaidan sees Gwen later and it’s burning in him to ask what happened. But he’s working on training new recruits on their biotics and he can’t risk taking the time away.

His thoughts are so trained on what he witnessed earlier that day that one of the new kids, Vod or something like that, launches himself into the ceiling, snaps his wrist on the way down.

Kaidan feels his eyes go wet, his face heat when he notices John is looking his way, looking at him. At the bones he’s trying to mend.

John jogs over and pushes to the front of the crowd that’s gathered. Gwen is giving him hell for hurting the kid, but it was the kid’s fault, he did it to himself, and he tells her as much.

She glares, and her hands glow green but John snaps his head around to her. “Back the fuck off, you’ve already done enough for one day.”

The vitriol in that statement sends Kaidan’s thoughts whirling. He doesn’t know what it means.

But then it’s John’s voice, soft and shushing as he starts wrapping the new kid’s wrist and forearm tight. Where’d he get the tape? Why does he know how to wrap a break? Why are his knuckles bruised when Kaidan hasn’t seem him fight anyone in a week?

“Not your fault,” John tells him, voice neutral but firm. As if it’s a fact and not opinion.

Kaidan doesn’t believe him.

“Thank you,” he mutters anyway.

\--

Three nights later, Kaidan is lying awake in his standard issue cot. Standard issue for Alliance personnel, stolen a year back. There are holes torn into it, various places to stash goods and snacks you didn’t want the others to know about.

He’s been here long enough he at least _gets_ a cot, even his own room. Boss gave him that perk when he’d secured a case of 2036 whiskey from some corrupt Alliance officials.

This place isn’t any kinder than before, but it’s better.

He tells himself this every night before closing his eyes, but tonight, he only blinks again because someone is knocking gently on his door.

When he opens the door, he sees John on the other side, looking shifty. And exhausted.

He opens the door a crack but doesn’t let him in. John just sighs and peels open one side of his jacket. He’s got a box of something Russian but they look like little creamy desserts so he finally steps aside.

John grins and Kaidan can see one of his teeth is chipped.

“You fight too much,” Kaidan tells him as he makes himself at home. Outside, Kaidan can feel the cold breeze of a wintery night and sees a distant firepit still lit. Instead of hounding the younger kids about it, he just closes the door and ignores it. John is here, and he’s far more interesting.

John runs his tongue quick over his teeth. “Boss says I’m a good fighter.”

Kaidan snorts. When John gives him a questioning look, he just shrugs. “He used to tell me that too.”

John doesn’t look surprised. John’s been here for close to a year by now and he’s been sent on plenty of missions. Kaidan’s been assigned to training for the last year.

“What happened?” he asks. Like it’s an easy question.

John pats the space beside him gently when he realizes Kaidan is tense. He has no intention of sitting beside him. He doesn’t know what this is.

John offers him a sweet followed by a lopsided smile. He looks shy, but Kaidan knows he’s anything but.

Kaidan takes the sweet and holds it. “Killed a kid. He was thirteen.”

“Unlucky kid,” John comments dryly. “You didn’t mean to though.”

“I was supposed to cover him, but he got in the way of my lance at the last second. Didn’t see him,” he trails off and bites into the powdery sweet. It’s strawberry something and Kaidan wonders if it’s real or synthetic, like so many things on Earth these days. “I got tired of it happening.”

“Whoa.” That had been a misstep on his part. “What?” John asks.

He looks pleading, eyes intense, and Kaidan remembers him kissing Gwen.

“A year before you showed up here, I was in a school for biotics. They trained me, but I…slipped. I was the best, always had been, for years. But I made a mistake and killed my doct—my teacher. He was hurting the others.” He swallows and wonders if he’ll have another headache. “I took a shuttle and crashed it at the nearest nav-point that meant land and I ended up here.”

John chewed for a while, just watching him. It was unnerving how intense John could be sometimes. Maybe that’s why he was always so quick to get into fights. “You stole a shuttle? And flew? Through space?”

“And ended up in Vancouver, yeah.”

John lights up and sets the box down. His hands are on his knees and he looks amazed. “Wow. Never been to space, but I always wanted to go.”

There’s wonder in his voice, a sort of awe. Kaidan understands but also…he doesn’t particularly want to return anytime soon.

“Join the Alliance then,” he tells him on a snort.

John wrinkles his nose. Kaidan finally caves and settles beside him, keeping a respectable distance between them. John tracks him with those dark eyes of his the entire time. “Unlikely,” he finally says.

“Why?”

“Military life got my parents killed,” he says, matter of fact.

“I’m sorry,” Kaidan whispers, remembering each and every shuttle release of a dead BAaT student. “Space is beautiful. But I don’t think I’ll be ready to go back up there for a long time.”

“I don’t remember them much.” John shrugs and leans back on Kaidan’s bed.

“Why did you kiss Gwen?”

John raises an eyebrow at him. He looks bemused, and Kaidan…Kaidan is embarrassed but he takes a deep breath to calm himself, ignoring the way he feels his face flushing.

“She kissed me,” John tells him. “I didn’t want her to.”

And Kaidan smiles. John stares back, glances at his mouth. Something heavy falls off him then, he hadn’t realized how bad it had been hanging on him these last few days.

“You like it here?” John asks him suddenly. He’s still glancing between his eyes and mouth and Kaidan has a hard time keeping his pulse steady.

“Not really,” he tells him honestly.

John hums and picks up the sweets.

\--

Boss is getting aggressive.

They’ve lost five people in two weeks, and with all the rushed whispering of the senior members it’s starting to feel like BAaT all over again.

He’s told to push the new recruits harder. He’s told it doesn’t matter if they break. Only that if they do, to clean it up.

Kaidan knows he has to leave.

He’s a few months past eighteen and he’s been seeing Batarians around a lot more. On Earth that wasn’t a good thing. Especially not in this crowd. His crowd.

John is sent away on more and more missions, for longer and longer. He always brings something back for Kaidan. Something small, or disposable they can hide or eat in Kaidan’s room at night. When he’s here, he spends most nights with Kaidan, on his floor. He’s gotten used to his breathing, gotten used to craving it when he’s not here.

The first war is when John comes back, broken and bloody in a makeshift sling. He’s being dragged along the uneven cement ground and Kaidan runs over, already holding his arms out to float John in front of him.

“What the hell happened here?” he demands of the nearest person. Some sheepish looking guy who had a patch over his eyes and a few new cuts and bruises.

He seemed shaken. “Cadwell had an Asari for a guard. We weren’t given the intel.”

 _God_ , he thinks. John was his age, a kid. They were all kids, he suddenly realized.

 _I need to get him out of here_.

John takes two weeks to recover enough to stand fully without wavering. Even though he insists after the first ten days that he’s just fine, Kaidan knows and observes differently.

Boss calls John over that same afternoon and by the look on John’s face, it’s another mission. He’s sick and tired of all the fucking missions.

“Hey,” Kaidan says quietly to him as he walks over. “I need to talk to you.”

John nods and follows him into his room.

He looks utterly exhausted. His face is still bruised in places, his eyebrow stitched with second-rate supplies. They deserve better than this.

“I’m used to it,” John tells him, knowing Kaidan is searching his face.

“I’m not.”

John smiles something small and warm at him.

“I’m getting us out of here.”

“How?” is all John asks, all business as usual. He doesn’t seem phased by the idea.

“I have a plan,” Kaidan breathes.

\--

“I’m not joining up. The Alliance is military scum. They get people killed.” John is pacing around his small room, pointing at the floor as he hisses out the words.

Kaidan knew he wouldn’t like his idea.

“You were just a kid—” he tries to say.

But John has other plans. The look he sends him then burns and Kaidan sighs.

“Exactly. They leave kids without families and they don’t care.” John groans and throws his hands up. “Why in the hell would I join them?”

“Because it’s shelter and food.” _And a purpose_ , he doesn’t say. “We’ve both been through worse.”

John shoots him a pained glance. “You fled an Alliance funded program. Why would you go back?”

He shakes his head. “BAaT was different. We starved and broke and died and I still came out alive. Why? Because I don’t know why I lived and so many others didn’t.”

_I need to do something with my life. They can’t._

John looks like he understands. And really, that’s why he wants John to come with him. Why he wants John out just as much as he himself wants freedom. They shouldn’t be in a gang filled with people who don’t care if their friends go hungry at night.

“We deserve better from the world, Shepard,” he says. “And we’ll be together.”

John blinks and doesn’t argue.

When Kaidan kisses him, it’s the first time and a break in the war he feels like he’s been fighting for years.

John sighs and pulls him closer.


End file.
